Joan Jonas exhibition set to open Aug. 10 at Eltuek Arts Centre

Article contentWe Come from the Sea follows its North American debut at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and now opens first in Unama’ki — before Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, or even Halifax. This is rare, and extraordinary. The exhibition’s centrepiece, Moving Off the Land II, is a layered installation: ocean life as art form, evolution, grief, climate change.Article contentJonas has lived in Inverness County for over 50 summers, in a small wooden house, along eroding and shifting cliffs, overlooking west coast sunsets. The light over the water is never the same twice.Article contentShe looks out to the horizon the way Cape Bretoners do, the way Cape Bretoners have done for centuries — reading its changes, looking to it for clues, searching for questions and answers, letting it guide and ground us in our day-to-day lives.Article contentCarson understood the long rhythms of earth and sea, the beauty and quiet mystery of the low-tide world, where life gleams and clings at the edge. Jonas’s work moves within that same rhythm, between art and nature, memory and present, wonder and warning. Cape Breton lives there too, carrying its own magic and complicated history, a strange and beautiful place with a strange and beautiful people.Article contentArticle content‘IT’S A GIFT’Article contentAn dà shealladh. Some of us have carried this second sight all our lives — seeing in dreams, in visits in the morning light, a knowing of things to come. It is the same sight that shaped Eltuek’s own beginning, a story of magic and sheer will against the tide.Article contentIn 2010, a group of artists saw what wasn’t there yet. In 2020, after years of work, vision, and spirit in the face of disbelief, Eltuek opened its doors. The name Eltuek, which means (we) are making (it) together, was given by Mi’kmaw elders to honour the first language of this island. It says exactly what it means. This place can hold the work of the world and still be of this place.Article contentJoan Jonas is a visionary of video and performance whose experiments have shaped the language of contemporary art for more than 50 years.Article contentHaving Joan Jonas’s work here somehow feels both inevitable and impossible. It’s a gift.Article contentAnd it matters, too, that the work is also being shown at the Inverness County Centre for the Arts (ICCA). Eltuek and ICCA, east and west, are like two harbours on the same coast, holding this moment together.Article contentArticle contentMoments like this don’t happen by accident. They happen because places like Eltuek are nurtured and sustained, by care, persistence, and vision. A community that can hold this work and conversation can be anything, after decades of being told it couldn’t.Article content‘THE ARTIST’S SIGHT…HAS ALWAYS BEEN WITH US’Article contentThe artist’s sight — of what is here, what has been, and what is coming — has always been with us.Article contentIt lives in an dà shealladh, in Carson’s writings and warnings, in Jonas’s art, and in L’nu knowledge which has seen and known the past, present, and future of these lands and waters of Unama’ki since time immemorial. The exhibition opens here not by coincidence, but as part of that long continuum of seeing.Article contentThis is for all of us who feel the pull of this place — the sea, the light, the history, and its future. Who notice the slow shifts of the shoreline, the way the beaches change with each passing season, year over year. We know something is happening, and we carry it. We come from the sea gathers that knowing — holding it and stewarding a conversation with those whose legacy is rooted in these waters, and those still learning how to listen.Article contentAs the sea around us is deep and wide, so too is our gratitude — to Joan, her collaborators, and the many artists, makers, and thinkers whose work and care brought this exhibition into being, and to Eltuek Arts Centre.Article contentWe hope you will join us in this moment.Article contentChristie MacNeil is director of arts and community, and Melissa Kearney is artistic director, at the Eltuek Arts Centre. Article content